


Bad Actors With Bad Habits

by yourcrookedheart



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 19:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15126539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourcrookedheart/pseuds/yourcrookedheart
Summary: Wes' lonely evening is interrupted by an unexpected caller.





	Bad Actors With Bad Habits

**Author's Note:**

> This is set early on during Angel s4 and Buffy s7. Forgive me if the timeline doesn't _entirely_ make sense. 
> 
> Title from Bright Eyes' Lover I Don't Have To Love.

The knock on the door sliced through the lamina of silence that shrouded the apartment, and for one extended, ludicrous moment, Wes thought it was Angel. That he’d open the door and Angel would be there again, like a pale and imposing wraith, months of imprisonment at the bottom of the ocean barely visible anymore beyond chapped lips and a permanent frown — deeper than usual, like when he’d found out Buffy had died. He’d shuffle on the doorstep, waiting for an invitation he didn’t need since Wes hadn’t reinstated the wards, and then he’d apologize, quiet and sincere.

Sometimes the breadth of Wes’ imagination surprised even himself.

It wasn’t Angel, standing on his doorstep. It wasn’t Lilah either, though he hadn’t really expected it to be. She relished her job, considered working overtime a benefit. It wasn’t even dark yet and, like a vampire, Lilah would only show up at his door when dusk had settled on the city. ‘Twilit lovers’, she’d mirthfully called the two of them when he’d commented on it, as if this was some sort of harlequin paperback novel.

It wasn’t Angel, or Lilah, or even one of Wes’ new employees standing in the darkened hallway. It was Rupert Giles. The list of people Wes expected a visit from these days was admittedly short, but Giles wouldn’t even qualify for the ‘maybe’ addendum. And yet there he was. The lightbulb in front of Wes’ apartment had bowed out sometime last week and seeing as the landlord was conveniently nowhere to be found, it left Giles standing mostly in the darkness. A soft glow emanated from the living room and reflected in his glasses, obscuring his eyes so Wes couldn’t see the expression hiding there.

“Giles,” Wes said, then immediately regretted it for how inane it sounded.

“Wesley.” An amused quirk of his lips, and Wes felt his hackles rise. He’d lost his manners after months of solitary confinement, and somehow it took him a while to realize Giles was waiting for an invitation to enter. He stepped aside, let Giles traipse in on his own. More out of habit than any real suspicion, since he was doubtful he’d be the first stop on Giles’ vampire pub crawl. It got him a look of begrudging approval, though, which annoyed him as much as it flattered him.

“What brings you here?” He asked as he leaned against the table. Left Giles standing in the middle of the apartment and reveled in the sense of awkwardness. Traditionally, this was the part where one offered a drink, but Wes didn’t particularly want Giles to stay any longer than necessary and a drink would give the impression that he was happy with the company. He didn’t know what had possessed Giles to decide to pay him a visit, but he saw no need to prolong his stay.

Giles didn’t even raise an eyebrow at Wes’ lack of hospitality, simply took off his suede jacket and sat down at the table, which was still cluttered with books from last night. He casually turned a few of them over, but didn’t comment on them. “I presume you’ve heard by now?”

“I’ve heard.” His father had called — and hadn’t that been a pleasant conversation. Wes hadn’t mentioned his separation from Angel Investigations, wishing to be spared the lecture. He would find out one day, but Wes would prolong that moment for as long as he could. Of course, with Giles being here, he might get the lecture anyway. “Was that what you came here for?” he asked, a little impatiently. The sooner Giles was out the door, the sooner Wes could go back to… well, being on his own. Waiting for Lilah to arrive. Not having to feign interest in an old colleague whom he’d never really liked.

Giles traced the silver etchings on the spine of one of the books. “They’re hunting down Slayers. Watchers, too. Call it concern for an old colleague.”

“Not a Watcher anymore.”

Fingers trailing along a page now, and Giles looked up with a sardonic smile. “Yes, well.”

Wes shifted under the scrutiny, this unannounced presence on his personal territory. He was thirsty, and his fingers itched for a glass of Absolut, but he couldn’t get a drink without offering Giles one. “Thank you for the warning.” There, graceful acceptance of the message. Surely that was enough to make him leave. But Giles only leaned backwards, as if to make himself more comfortable on the wooden chair.

“I visited the hotel,” he said. “I was in town for a meeting with a collector of rare books that might be useful in our current situation. Buffy asked me to make some inquiries to Angel. He told me what happened.”

“The part about when I kidnapped his son, the part where he tried to smother me, or the part where said son came back and tried to commit patricide?”

“All of it.”

“Then you’re all caught up.” So why are you still here, Wes wanted to ask, but despite everything he couldn’t bring himself to be so rude. Not if Giles had showed up on his doorstep out of a genuine concern for his well-being as he claimed.

“It’s quite the story.” He waited for Wes to respond, though what exactly he was expecting him to say was a mystery. Then, when it became clear Wes wasn’t going to fill the silence, he abandoned the books to fiddle with his glasses. He used to do the same thing back in Sunnydale, a nervous habit that he’d apparently never been able to shake. Ever since Connor, Wes had decided to forego his own glasses. He’d always thought they made him look more intelligent, worldly-wise, much like they did for Giles, but now he suspected he’d simply looked young and foolish. He had been, but then he was neither of those things now. And as Giles turned his glasses over in his hands, Wes calmly rested against the edge of the table and watched.

“I could leave,” Giles said eventually, though he made no move to get up. Incidentally, the offer made Wes feel more generous towards him than he had in recent memory, and so while part of him wanted to grasp the opportunity to usher Giles out of the door, the other part, the Wesley who had been raised in an English mansion by a tutor, inclined his head and shrugged.

“Stay.” He headed towards the liquor cabinet, expanded for the occasion, and turned to address Giles. “Can I offer you a drink?”

“Please,” Giles said, surprise coloring his voice.

From the corner of his eye he could see Giles taking in the array of half-empty liquor bottles. He scolded himself for noticing, and caring what he thought at all. “Scotch? Cognac?”

Giles shrugged. “I’m not fussy.”

Settling for the Scotch — a Laphroaig he’d gotten from Cordelia for his last birthday — Wes poured two lowball glasses and carried them over to the coffee table, expecting Giles to get the hint and follow him.

“So,” Wes said once they’d settled onto the couch and had stared into space long enough for it to become awkward. “How have you been?”

Giles turned his glass over in his hands. “As well as can be expected, I suppose.” He drew in a breath as if to continue, then seemed to think better of it. “Well enough.”

That was a dismissal if Wes’d ever heard one.

“How about you?”

“Never been better.” Wes turned to place his glass on the coffee table and felt Giles’ gaze settle on his neck. The tender skin around the scar itched, a phantom burn. Wes glanced back up, expecting to find either pity or aversion on Giles’ face, but all he could distinguish was faint curiosity, like Giles had come across a Phrygian prophecy that was taking longer than expected to translate.

“Will you tell me what happened?” he asked. More of the polite inquisitiveness.

Wes frowned. “I thought Angel gave you the full report.”

“He did. I was rather hoping to hear your version.”

“I’m sure Angel’s was accurate enough.”

Giles’ expression was blank, and the inscrutability of it crept under Wes’ skin and settled as a tension in his shoulders. Even Lilah was predictable in her unpredictability, a stable whirlwind that blew through his apartment every other evening and left nothing but take-out boxes and lipstick-stained glasses. He knew little of her life, only what she told him, and he made himself no illusions about how much truth those stories contained. But he knew who she was and who she wasn’t, and he knew what her presence indicated.

Giles, however, he had no idea where to place. And he had no topic of conversation to broach, considering that even in Sunnydale they’d never been cordial enough to exchange interests. For all Wes knew, Giles spent his free evenings knitting sweaters, or visiting darkrooms in seedy clubs. What was he supposed to make of the long look when it wasn’t being followed by any further questions?

“You never went back to England,” Giles said eventually. An observation, but Wes could hear the implicit question.

“You did.”

Giles looked at him over the rim of his glass.

“Angel told me. Not sure how he knew. Buffy, maybe.”

“Are you planning to return?” Giles asked, side-stepping the topic of his own life as deftly as he had earlier.

Wes had considered it. As he’d lain there in the hospital, with the life he’d built over the past few years shattered beyond fixing, he’d contemplated leaving America for England, for the Council. There’d been nothing for him in LA, nothing that he couldn’t leave behind if he should choose to, and he knew on some level that his father would take him back in if he asked. If he begged. The thought alone was enough to make Wes recoil, as was the mental picture of the smug look on his father’s face if Wes were to show up on his doorstep, suitcase in hand, and announce his homecoming.

No, he would not be returning to England any time soon.

Wes shook his head and took a sip of Scotch. The burning slide of alcohol down his throat was soothing, familiar. “That part of my life is a closed chapter. I’m happy keeping it that way.”

“So you did grow a spine. Not sure I’d believe it if I hadn’t seen it for myself,” Giles said, a smile threatening to slip. If this was his way of complimenting Wes, he could keep it.

“What does that make you, then? You went back. More than once, even.”

Now Giles did smile, a soft, amused tilt of lips. “Touché.”

Wes waited for Giles to elaborate, defend his choices, but Giles only leaned forward to examine the Underworld paperback Wes had left on the coffee table from when he’d fallen asleep on the couch the night before. “Don DeLillo?” The tone of his voice said enough about what he thought of Wes’ tastes.

“I figured you’d enjoy the long-winded pretentiousness.” Wes said, allowing the change of subject.

“Too American and too… flippant.”

“I think he makes some good points.”

Giles raised an eyebrow, as if he didn’t even deem that statement worthy of a reply. It validated what Wes had considered earlier. He didn’t know anything about Giles, not really. Oh, he knew the history, of course. He’d learned that long before he arrived in Sunnydale. By the time Wesley had started his training with the Council, Rupert Giles had become a story of caution, paraded out ever so often by elders and tutors to warn off anyone who would think of straying. It had been one of Wes’ own father’s favorites, in fact — in part, Wes suspected, because he’d had a contentious relationship with Giles Senior. It had undoubtedly brought him great joy that the heir of the Giles family had disgraced himself, while his own son rose in the ranks.

That wasn’t always how the story was received, though. In the dorms, between classes, away from the listening ears of the superiors, Rupert Giles became a story of excitement. One who’d done the impossible, and defied the Council. It was more myth than anything, and doubtlessly the Council’s official version stayed closer to reality than whatever school boys came up with in their imagination. Yet all renditions had one thing in common: they were a source of endless fascination.

Rupert Giles had lived three years of hedonism in London.

Rupert Giles had once summoned a demon.

Rupert Giles had killed a man.

Rupert Giles had sold his soul to an agent of one of the more infamous Hell dimensions.

All of them, every single story told by a boy who’d heard this or that from their parents, trumped the previous ones in apparent unlikeliness. And whenever Wesley was asked to comment by his friends, he would tell the truth, namely that he didn’t believe a word that wasn’t approved by the Council or his father, and Rupert Giles could count himself lucky he’d ever been allowed to rejoin the ranks at all.

Yet when he arrived in Sunnydale, fifteen years later, to meet the myth at the center of the salacious story that had tracked his adolescence, he’d found no traces of that disrepute. And a part of Wes, one that he hadn’t realized had existed, had felt disappointed. No edge of madness behind the practical glasses, no leather or anything even approaching illicit magic use. This was the man who’d nearly unleashed a civil war among Council members upon his return. It had seemed implausible.

It still seemed implausible, even now. Who was this man sitting across from him, making polite conversation about literature and mutual connections? He wasn’t even imposing, really. Not like Wes had expected. His questions belied an interest, but he wasn’t pushing. They’d been sitting in silence for a few minutes now as Wes’ thoughts circled around the issue, but at no point had Giles attempted to catch his attention again. Perhaps because he’d been doing the same thing. Contrasting the Wes he remembered with the one he was watching now, and trying to make sense of the difference. Wes wondered what it was he saw.

“You’re headed back to Sunnydale tonight?” he asked.

“No rest for the wicked,” Giles said, nodding. “I forgot what it was like, the constant imminent threat of Apocalypse and doom. In England I was more concerned with what to make for dinner.” He sounded wistful.

“Why did you return, then?”

“Constant imminent threat of Apocalypse and doom. That, and the sacred duty seems rather hard to shake.”

Wes let out a humorless chuckle. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that sacred duty is overrated. If you want to quit, then quit.”

“Far be it from me to point out, but you quit saving the world in the Council’s employ to save the world in Angel’s employ. Hardly a retirement.”

“So you’re saying we’re fated to keep fighting evil?”

“Now we’re going to end up debating nature versus nurture,” Giles said, the glimmer in his eyes betraying his amusement. Then he grew serious again, and glanced down into his glass. “When I left Sunnydale — the last time I did — I considered myself done. I rebuilt a life in England, found myself a challenging employment that didn’t involve any life-threatening situations, rekindled old relations. Now it seems I’m leaving those yet again.”

Wes remembered the feeling well enough. He’d been thrilled to have been selected as _the_ Watcher, so thrilled in fact that he hadn’t even had to break off the relationship with his then girlfriend — she’d been so upset at his elation that she’d called it off then and there. It hadn’t been until he boarded the plane that he’d realized exactly what he was giving up; his whole life up until that point. He wondered if Giles had left a girlfriend behind in England.

“My father would say it’s a sacrifice every Watcher must make.”

Giles raised his glass. “To Roger Wyndam-Pryce and the rest of his ilk. May they choke on their inspirational advice.”

His face was so serious as he said it that Wes couldn’t help but laugh, genuine and sharp. It spread through him in the way the Scotch had, a warm swell that soothed the tension in his body.

Pleased, Giles set his now empty glass down on the table. “Thank you, for the company as well as the Scotch. It was good seeing you again.” He got up from the couch. “But I should get going if I want to reach Sunnydale before dark,” he added regretfully.

Wes nearly asked him to stay a little longer, before remembering he hadn’t wanted Giles here in the first place, and Lilah would arrive later this evening. And now that Giles was regarding him with some manner of respect, Wes would rather not ruin it by having those two cross paths.  
He got up as well to see Giles out the door, but before he could say anything, the sound of his cell phone blared through the apartment. He held up his hand to Giles, motioning him to wait while he checked the caller ID.

“Lilah?”

“Hey, lover.” Her voice was smooth and low over the phone, and Wes turned away from Giles as he focused on it. “Turns out it’s a busy day at the office. You know how it is, calamity to be caused, evil to be done.”

“You won’t make it.”

She sighed. “I’m not sure. I wish I could tell you, but… you know roshak demons, get them to talk and they go on until morning. Gavin’s being a bitch about it, apparently he had a date tonight.” She paused for a second, then continued, in an even lower tone, “I’m sure you can find ways to entertain yourself in the meantime. I can fit in some calls later tonight, if you want.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Wes said, conscious of Giles presence somewhere over his left shoulder. “As you said, I can find ways to entertain myself.”

“Are you blowing off phone sex because you’re mad at me?” Lilah taunted, and Wes huffed out an annoyed breath.

“Let’s not make this into something it’s not, Lilah.” He listened to the silence, imagined he could hear her breathing through the receiver.

Eventually, her reply. “Alright. Have fun.”

“You too.”

He jammed the end-call button a little too forcefully and turned back towards Giles, wincing at the inquisitive look there.

“Friend of yours?”

“Acquaintance,” Wes said, and Giles laughed. Not in a mean way, just shook his head and grinned.

“I’m sure.” He’d picked up his coat as Wes was calling, and he was standing near the door, waiting politely for Wes to show him out.  
Wes, whose evening was suddenly and depressingly barren.

“How desperately do you need to get back tonight?” he asked, and Giles blinked, probably as confused at the one-eighty Wes was doing as Wes was himself. “It’s just that I’ve found myself with a free evening and a bottle of good Scotch,” Wes added, an explanation he hadn’t meant to give.  
Giles glanced at his watch in a universal sign for ‘desperate to leave the premises’. He wasn’t tapping his foot, but there was a silent ‘yet’ tacked at the end of that sentence.

“It’s rush hour.”

Another glance at the watch, then a frown, as if Giles couldn’t believe it had betrayed him.

Wes poured another glass of amber liquid and held it out, lowering it to his side when Giles shifted once more.

“I suppose the information isn’t entirely urgent,” Giles said at last, hesitatingly, before stepping into Wes’ space and reaching out. Reflexively, Wes took a step back, until he realized Giles had been reaching for the glass of Laphroaig. He recovered, but not quickly enough, and Wes thought he could detect the hint of a smirk on Giles’ lips.

“You’re just staying for the Scotch,” Wes said accusingly as he watched Giles make himself at home on his sofa.

“I sincerely hope you’re not waiting for me to deny that.” The jab was missing the frigid tinge that would’ve accompanied it in Sunnydale, and it softened most of the remnants of the irritation Wes felt into a pleasant buzz — a result of the familiar combination of good alcohol and stimulating company.

Mostly the alcohol, in this case.

“Are you going to stand there the whole evening?” Wes looked up to find Giles turned towards him, leaning his arm against the back of the sofa.

And now Wes was being invited to sit on his own couch. He let himself settle down at the other end without comment, pouring himself another glass and letting the silence stretch. Let Giles initiate conversation if he wanted to — the apartment was used to the quiet of a solitary occupant, and Wes had grown equally accustomed to it. Then again, as far as Wes knew, Giles had always lived on his own as well.

A soft inhale, then Giles asked, “Do you enjoy it here?”

There was plenty of ambiguity in _here_. Here as in, this apartment? Los Angeles? America? Wes’ existence on planet earth?

Giles caught Wes’ look and continued, “America. California, more specifically.”

“Do you?” The expression on Giles’ face said he didn’t.

“I got used to it.”

“You get used to loud neighbors. You get used to waking up to early for a job you dread. Doesn’t mean you enjoy it.”

Giles did a minimalist version of an eye roll that was enviable in its succinct effectiveness. “Yes, thank you for that analysis of my words. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed California, no. I enjoyed aspects of it, mostly the ones unrelated to the American mindset, education system, weather, or beer.”

Wes wondered what was left. Buffy Summers? Seemingly not persuasive enough to be weighed against the negatives.

“You enjoy it here,” Giles remarked.

Past tense; enjoyed. Wes wasn’t about to correct him.

“Why? No, please, I’m genuinely curious,” Giles said with a flourish of his wrist when Wes raised his eyebrow.

Wes decided to indulge him. Told him about the diner at the corner of the street where he used to get organic French toast every morning for the first few months he moved to LA. The waiters who were all aspiring actors, or failed ones, and whose unwavering enthusiasm was both endearing and pitiful. Even the Christmas celebrations in sunny summer weather when everyone walked around in board shorts. By the end of his list, Wes realized he’d been talking for longer than he had in weeks, and that Giles’ attention surprisingly hadn’t waned, even if he still seemed skeptical.

After that, conversation grew easier, almost as if Wes was catching up with an old friend. The rounded vowels of Giles’ accent were pleasantly familiar, as pleasant as it was to be spending time with someone whose interests aligned so neatly with his own. That shouldn’t have been surprising, considering their similar backgrounds, but somehow it was. Giles was funny, when his caustic gibes were directed at someone other than Wes. Most of them were addressed to old Council colleagues, people who Wes had encountered and equally disliked. Once or twice, he brought up Angel. It should’ve stung, but Wes found that those comments produced the most laughter from him, and that all of it felt suspiciously exhilarating. Almost furtive; gossiping about people who’d once upon a time had had his respect.

The digital clock near the TV indicated seven when Giles stretched out his legs and asked, in a deceptively nonchalant voice, “Who was she?”

Outside, dusk painted the sky behind the horizon’s tall buildings exotically pink and golden, like nature was contending with the city’s countless neon billboards. The apartment had ceded to shadows, and Wes considered turning on the light except he liked the atmosphere of it, vaguely poetic without being maudlin.

“The woman on the phone,” Giles clarified, when Wes remained silent for too long.

“Lilah. She’s…” Wes hesitated again.

“Important to you?”

“In a sense. Not the sense you’re thinking.”

Giles raised an eyebrow. “She’s your lover.”

“Well. Yes. That would be an accurate description of our relationship.” Not that there was a relationship to speak of, but that seemed too complicated to explain without getting into the gritty details of Lilah’s employment. “What about you?” Wes returned. “Any lovers all alone in England crying themselves to sleep over your departure?”

Giles turned his glass over in hand, swirling the last remnants of Scotch against the crystal. “There was someone, for a while.”

Wes wanted to press for more. He would’ve, only an hour ago, but it seemed impolite to do so now, their connection too precarious to test its boundaries.

It seemed to be the right decision when Giles continued, haltingly and staring at a point somewhere above Wes’ right shoulder. “Marcus.” Giles’ frame was rigid in a way they hadn’t been since he’d first arrived on Wes’ doorstep. “For what it’s worth, I don’t believe he’s crying himself to sleep as we speak.”

Over the years, not much of Wes’ time had been spent on considering Giles’ dating habits. More Council rumors he’d dismissed upon arriving in Sunnydale, wrongfully so, it seemed. He didn’t know how to respond, settled for the first thing that came to mind. “Now you’re selling yourself short.”

Giles smiled, but it was a smile without any conviction behind it. “Perhaps.”

Wes wondered who this Marcus had been. An old friend, one of the wayward sorcerers from his delinquent youth? Or maybe a new colleague, reliable and sophisticated.

“Tell me about Lilah?” Apparently the topic of Marcus had been closed. Wes allowed the conversation to skate past even as his own thoughts remained trailing behind.

“She’s… well, evil. Not big bad evil, more lawyer corporation evil.” It was an oversimplification of Lilah, but then, trying to sum up the intricacy of Lilah Morgan in a few sentences was impossible. “She works for Wolfram and Hart.”

Giles’ eyebrows migrated to his hairline in a way that was a little comical. It seemed like Wes could still surprise him, even after everything he must have heard from Angel about what had transpired in Los Angeles over the past few months.

“She must be… compelling,” he said, in a way that indicated ‘compelling’ wasn’t the word he’d meant to use.

It was a word that fit Lilah perfectly, though. Giles hadn’t met her, so he couldn’t imagine the blaze of her, saturated flames brightening up Wes’ monochrome life. A ludicrous thought crossed his mind that Lilah and Giles would get along, somehow, ideological differences notwithstanding.  
Some of it must have shone through in his eyes, because Giles was leaning back, observing him in stilted silence.

“Dangerous, to be in love with someone in league with evil such as Wolfram and Hart.”

“Love has nothing to do with this.” It came out more defensive than Wes had anticipated, even if it was the truth.

Giles hummed, kaleidoscopic sunset lights playing over the angles of face like an undiscovered Picasso painting. He seemed content to sit there and watch, but there was an energy humming beneath the surface, something unreadable behind his eyes.

“You were right, I believe. Earlier, when you said leaving the Council was only a matter of packing up your bags and going. I suppose I’m reluctant to accept it because it would be admitting to a failure on my part.”

Wes let the words settle in before replying. “You’re saying it comes down to nurture after all.”

“Perhaps. You managed to sever ties, make a clean break with your history. More than once, even.”

“It’s not always preferable,” Wes said. The result of it, he didn’t say, was that it left you with innumerable frayed ends, never to be revisited, never to be granted closure. In the end, there were too many people under Wes’ skin, clawing for dominance. Perfect son, failed Watcher, rogue demon hunter, champion, pariah; all of them costumes he’d worn and discarded, until he found that none of them fit anymore. Perhaps they never had. Perhaps there was another person underneath all this, the real Wesley Wyndam-Pryce if only he could uncover him. Or perhaps this was all he was, an amalgam of half-formed identities shaping into a not-quite whole.

He wondered which of his myriad of identities would let his gaze latch onto Giles’ as he read the unwavering stare for what it was — interest. He would’ve caught on earlier if it had been a woman sitting across from him, but this wasn’t quite his scene. At least, it wasn’t the scene of the man he’d been in England or Sunnydale. The man who routinely spent his nights tangled up in the embrace of his moderately evil lover, that man might be inclined to return the stare.

Might even, given enough time spent in charged silence, lean over to rest his hand on Giles’ leg.

Giles regarded the hand on his jeans as if it was a foreign yet intriguing magical artifact. “Careful. You could give a man the wrong idea,” he said, and Wes smiled faintly.

“I know you’re smarter than that.”

“Assuming is a tricky business,” Giles hedged, and then Wes had tired of tiptoeing. He leaned in further, pressed his lips to Giles’ until he felt a sigh move the air between them. Giles’ mouth parted beneath his.

“Then don’t assume,” he murmured into the kiss, and brought his hand up to rest against day-old stubble.

Wes himself wouldn’t have been so arrogant as to assume this was anything more than situational desire, but Giles kissed as if he’d been wanting this for longer than the couple of hours he’d spent in this apartment. Whether it was for Wes, for the lover he’d left behind in England, or some nameless, shapeless other, Wes couldn’t be sure, but it flattered him all the same.

He spared a single thought for Lilah, who’d been vague at best about whether she’d be visiting his apartment tonight, then dismissed it. Their arrangement worked because they owed each other nothing, and if Giles wasn’t going to ask, then he was content to focus on the present moment only. It offered enough appeal, anyway.

As fingers grazed along the buttons of his shirt, Wes imagined the man who had cocked things up in Sunnydale watching him now, seducing Rupert Giles of all people. That just made him think of what his father would say, and then he was laughing, breaking away from the kiss to press his forehead into Giles’ neck.

“Something funny?” Giles asked, sounding vaguely offended, and Wes raised his head to look him in the eye.

“Just… this. You, me.”

“You never thought about—” Giles seemed to realize how much he was giving away and left the sentence hanging unfinished in the air.

Wes trailed his fingers along Giles’ bottom lip, then made his lips follow their path. “Stop thinking so much,” he said, as much for Giles’ benefit as it was a reminder to himself, and replaced Giles’ hands on his shirt with his own, undoing the buttons one by one. He let the heat in Giles’ darkened eyes run through him like the smooth glide of expensive liquor.

At least in this moment, for as long as the night lasted, maybe it didn’t matter who either of them were.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://queennsansa.tumblr.com/).


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